Anachronism

About: Anachronism is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 854 publications have been published within this topic receiving 6921 citations. The topic is also known as: chronological inconsistency & temporal inconsistency.

Image, Medium, Body: A New Approach to Iconology

Abstract: ion in terms of the images’ translation intomodernist style and abstraction in terms of their transfer to gallery art. The colonization of indigenous images as a result of the Spanish conquest of Mexico has been beautifully analyzed by Serge Gruzinski, whose book Images at War provides a convenient guide for the topic. Two different issues in this historic situation may be singled out for my purpose. The first is the clash between seemingly incompatible concepts of what images are, which caused the Spaniards to reject the possibility that the Aztecs had images at all. The Spaniards denounced Aztec images asmerely strange objects, which they defined as cernies and thus excluded from any comparison with their own images. The same rejection applied to the native religion, which did not seem just a different religion but no religion at all. In fact, the images on both sides represented religion, whichwas an additional reason for the Spaniards to recognize nothing but idols or pseudoimages in Mexico. In a countermeasure, the importation of Spanish images became an important part of Spanish politics. But to introduce the foreign “icons” into the “dreams” of the indigenous, a mental colonization was needed. Heavenly visions were enforced on selected Aztecs to guarantee the appropriation of the imported images, which meant that living bodies became involved in that image transfer. The project was complete onlywhen Critical Inquiry / Winter 2005 319 the imported images also had taken possession of the mental images of the others. The project of the Spaniards, which was carried out with relentless zeal, provides an easy insight into the mechanics of image transmission, which never spares themental part but considers it the true target also in thepublic space. My last example seems to be far removed from today’s concerns, and yet I have chosen it precisely because of its seeming anachronism, which nevertheless makes it applicable tomy argument. It is not applicable for the reason that the colonization of our imagination still goes on today andeven happens within our own hemisphere, as Auge has demonstrated so well in his book La Guerre des reves. It is applicable because it explains the interaction of image, body, and medium in a striking way. It was not only the Spanish images but also their media—canvas painting and sculpture—that caused resistance among the indigenous, whose bodies (or brains) lacked any experience of this kind. Spanish art was surely involved in this event, as it was art that, at the time, provided the only visualmedia in existence. But the importedartifacts did not matter as art. They mattered only as agents of the all-important images. It therefore would be redundant to stress the political meaning, which is self-evident in this case. Only art in the modern sense, an art with a claim of autonomy, today attracts the familiar controversies about political stance or lack of political meaning. In our case, however, the depoliticization of the indigenous imageswas nothing but another act ofpolitics. It was only in Spain that Aztec artifacts became classified as art andcollected as such in order to become deprived of any political or religious significance and to remain outside the circulation of images. It is not necessary to draw parallels to our time, in which art constantly becomes neutralized by the art market. Originally, iconology, in art history’s terms, was restricted to art alone. Today, it is the task of a new iconology to draw a linkbetween art and images in general but also to reintroduce the body, which has either been marginalized by our fascination with media or defamiliarized as a stranger in our world. The present mass consumption of images needs our critical response, which in turn needs our insights on how images work on us.

Curriculum change and the post-modern world: Is the school curriculum-reform movement an anachronism?

Abstract: (2003). Curriculum change and the post-modern world: Is the school curriculum-reform movement an anachronism? Journal of Curriculum Studies: Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 139-149.

Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture

Abstract: In medieval studies, philology is the matrix out of which all else springs. So we scarcely need to justify the choice of philology as a topic for the special forum to which Speculum, in a historic move, has opened its pages. On the other hand, if philology is so central to our discipline, why should one postulate a "new" philology, however ironically? While each contributor answers this question in a different, though complementary, way, the consensus seems to be that medieval philology has been marginalized by contemporary cognitive methodologies, on the one side, while within the discipline itself, a very limited and by now grossly anachronistic conception of it remains far too current. This version, formulated under the impulse of political nationalism and scientific positivism during the second half of the nineteenth century, continues to circumscribe the "discipline" of medieval studies. The forum presented here undertakes to explore and interrogate presuppositions underlying current philological practices. What is "new" in our enterprise might better be called "renewal," renovatio in the twelfth-century sense. On the one hand, it is a desire to return to the medieval origins of philology, to its roots in a manuscript culture where, as Bernard Cerquiglini remarks, "medieval writing does not produce variants; it is variance."' On the other hand, a rethinking of philology should seek to minimize the isolation between medieval studies and other contemporary movements in cognitive methodologies, such as linguistics, anthropology, modern history, cultural studies, and so on, by reminding us that philology was once among the most theoretically avant-garde disciplines (cf. Vico, Ampere, Michelet, Dilthey, Vossler). Medievalists are frequently viewed by modernist colleagues as hostile or indifferent to contemporary theory. In such strictures, philology often figures both in the attack and in the defense: the modernists oppose theory to philology; the medievalists cite philology as a sufficiency that either precludes the need for theory or renders modern theories anachronistic in a medieval

The beauty of inflections : literary investigations in historical method and theory

Abstract: Part 1: Keats and the historical method in literary criticism. Part 2 Textual studies and practical criticism: the monks and the giants - textual and bibliographical studies and the interpretation of literary works shall these bones live? the text, the poem and the problem of historical method. Part 3 Interpretation and critical history: "The Ancient Mariner" - the meaning of the meanings Tennyson and the histories of criticism. Part 4 Problems of canon and periodization - the case of Christina Rossetti: Christina Rossetti's poems - a new edition and a revaluation the religious poetry of Christina Rossetti. Part 5 Literature and the critique of history: the book of Byron and the book of a world the anachronism of George Crabbe Rome and its Romantic significance. Conclusion: imaginative belief and critical commitment. Theses on the philosophy of criticism.

Alchemy Vs. Chemistry: the Etymological Origins of a Historiographic Mistake1

Abstract: The parallel usage of the two terms "alchemy" and "chemistry" by seventeenth-century writers has engendered considerable confusion among historians of science. Many historians have succumbed to the temptation of assuming that the early modern term "chemistry" referred to something like the modern discipline, while supposing that "alchemy" pertained to a different set of practices and beliefs, predominantly the art of transmuting base metals into gold. This paper provides the first exhaustive analysis of the two terms and their interlinguistic cognates in the seventeenth century. It demonstrates that the intentional partition of the two terms with the restriction of alchemy to the sense of metallic transmutation was not widely accepted until the end of the seventeenth century, if even then. The major figure in the restriction of meaning, Nicholas Lemery, built on a spurious interpretation of the Arabic definite article al, which he inherited from earlier sources in the chemical textbook tradition. In order to curtail the tradition of anachronism and distortion engendered by the selective use of the terms "alchemy" and "chemistry" by historians, the authors conclude by suggesting a return to seventeenth-century terminology for discussing the different aspects of the early modern discipline "chymistry."